Calls for 'sensible' health star rating for olive oil

Shopper confusion over what oils are good for them risks undermining Australia's health star ratings system, experts have warned.

The federal government's five-year review of the system has rejected calls to give olive oil special treatment, leaving it ranked below canola and sunflower oil at a maximum of four stars - despite having proven health benefits - because it contains slightly more saturated fat.

The battle of the oils is heating up as ministers debate changes to the health star ratings system.

Deakin University's Institute for Health Transformation director Anna Peeters said ignoring olive oil's healthy properties would undermine the effectiveness of the system, which aims to help shoppers make "sensible food purchasing decisions".

Professor Peeters urged the state and federal ministers responsible for food labelling to ensure that the health star ratings aligned "as much as possible with what consumers logically understand about healthy food choices".

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"There will be no perfect system for every single food but, once you've taken account of all the evidence, it has to have some sort of logical consistency - otherwise it gets undermined and people don't understand what's right and not right and why."

The government-backed health star ratings system assigns packed foods a health score out of five to guide consumers to make healthier choices.

The system was amended last year to fix a loophole that had allowed Nestle to label its popular product Milo with a 4.5 star rating, based on the assumption that Australians added three teaspoons of the mix to 200ml of skim milk.

She said extra virgin olive oil was the best option for home use, being low in saturated fat with a range of other nutritional benefits not considered by the health star system, while sunflower and canola oil were "industrially refined" and nutritionally inferior to olive oil.

The report of the five-star rating review by MP Consulting said while it "acknowledges the evidence submitted by stakeholders regarding the health benefits of olive oil", the system could only draw on "a finite set of factors" to determine a product’s rating.

"The health star rating system cannot and does not take into account all of the different reasons a food may have health benefits," the report said.

"For example, the calculator does not consider polyphenol or omega-3 content, vitamin content, the way the food is produced or the way that it is used in an individual’s diet."

The calculation is based on the amount of energy (kilojoules), sodium, saturated fat, total sugars, protein, fibre and fruit, vegetables, nuts or legumes in eligible packaged food products.

The Institute for Health Transformation supports a proposal to raise the cut-off of saturated fat from 12 per cent to 15 per cent to allow olive oil to have a five-star rating.

State and federal ministers are expected to decide on the issue when the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation meets in November.

"The review does not consider it appropriate to increase the health star rating of one type of oil over another on the basis of factors not considered for any other product," the report said.

It said allowing oils with up to 15 per cent saturated fat to get a score of five could not be achieved "without equally increasing the health star ratings of margarines and non-dairy blends" with the same levels of saturated fat.

The ministerial food forum's chairman Tasmanian senator Richard Colbeck said the system's integrity and "alignment with the national dietary guidelines" should be maintained, but that a decision on the report's recommendations would be made by the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum as a whole.

The forum, made up of federal and state food ministers from the two countries, had referred the report to its Food Regulation Standing Committee for advice and would make a decision on "next steps" in November, Senator Colbeck said.